Foreday started out as a j’ouvert-type, ‘dutty mas’ street party, a mud-and-paint-and-chocolate alternative to the pretty mas of Kadooment Day.

But at some point a few years ago, Foreday started to get prettied up. The costumes became…well costumes, not just t-shirts and short pants and colour-coordinated mud. They became sexier, with brightly coloured fabrics and gems and even feathers and sequins.

“I mean… it’s Foreday/Jouvert. It’s going to get covered in paint. What’s the big deal? The vast majority of jouvert costumes I see wherever West Indians are found still consist of a t-shirt, short pants, head tie and paint. It’s dutty mas not pretty mas.”

Of course, we were wrong about that since at the end of the jump, many revellers don’t even have a smidge or a smudge of paint on them, with makeup, hair and gems still in place. It’s a whole new (fore) day which makes me wonder if Foreday Morning isn’t evolving into something else more like what has been happening with Monday mas in Trinidad, where designers have been popping up to do custom-designed Monday wear that is an appropriately sexy and glamorous precursor to the Tuesday Carnival costumes.

A comparison of the costumes above (all from Bajantube) of costumes from Foreday Morning and Trinidad Carnival Monday would certainly seem to suggest that.

And if that’s the case, are we in some way making up for being one of the few places with only a Monday jump by using Foreday as another pretty mas jump? Questions, questions…

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1 comment for “Is Foreday Morning becoming like ‘Monday mas’?”

Shelly-Ann Noel

August 14, 2013 at 9:30 am

J’ouvert/Foreday morning mas is about getting ‘dutty’ and that’s the beautyof it. The J’ouvert in Trinidad is ‘j’ouvert’ and sticks to what it represents, a time when that was the way the people could express themselves about the order or the day and what was going on in the country. It also depicts the start of the revellery that is carnival’ showing the transition from Tambo-bamboo to the glory of Tuesday’s display of colours. Don’t pretty it up, its a thing of beauty in itself.